Opinion: In today’s pages: Obama, Clinton and fake IDs
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Columnist Rosa Brooks sends an unexpected message to Democrats about Barack Obama: he’s not a miracle worker. Talk about tamping down expectations.... Elsewhere on the op-ed page, George Washington University Professor Henry R. Nau advocates a Reaganesque melding of force and diplomacy in dealing with Russia, columnist Patt Morrison wades into the dispute between LAPD Chief Bill Bratton and retired cops over Hollywood security details, and security expert Bruce Schneier scoffs at the Transportation Security Agency’s tightened photo ID rules:
How to fly, even if you are on the no-fly list: Buy a ticket in some innocent person’s name. At home, before your flight, check in online and print out your boarding pass. Then, save that web page as a PDF and use Adobe Acrobat to change the name on the boarding pass to your own. Print it again. At the airport, use the fake boarding pass and your valid ID to get through security. At the gate, use the real boarding pass in the fake name to board your flight.
Over on the editorial page, the board tips its hat to Hillary Clinton for pushing her supporters to accept defeat and line up behind Obama:
It was only recently that Clinton insisted her followers needed a ‘catharsis’ at the convention, which sounded to some Obama supporters like a call for a co-starring role in Denver. Ironically, she achieved that role not by competing with Obama but by embracing him.
The board also encourages lawmakers in Sacramento to combat greenhouse-gas emissions by passing a ‘smart growth’ bill, while calling on Congress to ignore automakers’ request for subsidized loans:
If Bear Stearns, Fannie and Freddie are important enough to merit a helping hand from Washington, why not show some taxpayer-funded love to GM, Ford and Chrysler? Aren’t the Big Three, which collectively employ nearly 250,000 people in the U.S., also ‘too big to fail’? The short answer is no, they’re not.
* Nifty illustration courtesy of Jon Krause/Tribune Media Services